Sweat and Concrete: The Urban Heat of Inequality
Rising temperatures are differently impacting people, especially in urban cities.
Bengaluru, the capital city of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, is home to approximately 1.4 crore people. It has a large population of informal workers who build the city, keep it moving, and endure heat exposure for long hours while doing so. These are the daily labourers employed for physically intensive work, construction workers, street vendors, domestic helpers and cleaners, workers in small-scale industrial units, delivery staff zipping through the roads, auto and taxi drivers spending days and nights in metal cars, security guards working long hours in scorching heat, and other millions of people doing odd and miscellaneous jobs in the city. 38-year-old Venkatachala is one such informal worker, who makes a living by selling flowers on his pushcart.
As summers arrive and temperatures rise, it becomes difficult for Venkatachala to push his cart. “I get tired more easily, and my body aches. Once it gets even hotter, I sweat a lot and consequently feel dizzy and can’t do much,” Venkatchala said. Summer brings an added burden of selling most of the stock before 10 am, and all of it in the evening. A canopy is beyond his means, so the flowers quickly droop and shrivel in the sun. If the flowers are not sold by the next day, Venkatachala’s day fills with the heady and heartbreaking smell of wilting Indian chrysanthemums, jasmines, crossandras, and roses. Losing his entire stock is a great financial loss for the flower seller.
A World Bank report states that up to 75 per cent of India’s workforce depends on heat-exposed labour, at times working in potentially life-threatening temperatures. This is the informal workforce of the country that contributes to nearly half of the country’s GDP and bears the heavy brunt of the rising heat with its health, loss of earnings, and long-term effects on its bodies.
Bengaluru, situated at the centre of the southern Indian peninsula, was known for its ample green cover, abundant wetlands, and characteristic pleasant climate. Summer peaked in April at an average temperature of 34.1°C. This year, the temperatures soared to 34.1°C in February.
Venkatachala prefers the winters over summers. “It’s colder and physically easier to sell in the winter. The flowers last longer,” he said. On hot days, his productivity is low, business is slow, and frequent loss of stock adds to his financial burden. Added cost of amenities like water and electricity for fans further strain the family purse. Now, warming winters and increasing heat are adding to his worries.
In the first week of March 2024, Karnataka’s Health and Family Welfare Department had to issue a heat wave advisory. Heat waves, along with cyclones, tsunamis, landslides, floods, urban floods, and earthquakes, are categorised as natural disasters by the National Disaster Management Authority. The advisory stated:
Several points in the advisory are luxuries that lakhs of informal workers, like Venkatachala, cannot even think of.
Once renowned for its lakes and gardens, Bengaluru is now known for its IT parks. The city has earned the sobriquet of the Silicon Valley of India and witnessed an extraordinary expansion in urban built-up areas.
Source: WRI India analysis using World Settlement Footprint (WSF) Evolution 1985-2015, and WSF 2019; German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Venkatachala moved to Bengaluru from Bankapura, a village near Mysuru. The year was 2000; the city was green and many traditional houses didn’t have fans or heaters. It was also a year of notably chilly winter, with December recording a record-low temperature of 11.5°C.
In 2023, Bengalureans experienced the warmest December in a decade. The average temperature during the night was recorded at 18.6°C, 2.7°C higher than nighttime temperatures in 2013.
The heat in our urban areas is a result of an unholy combination of climate change and land misuse. The current urban landscape is built with concrete, metal, and asphalt. These materials absorb heat during the day and take a long time to cool at night. As a result, the nights in cities like Bengaluru have become warmer than they were. This is called the urban heat island effect.
“Due to repeated encounters with heat in their everyday lives, the workers are unable to cool down and recover from heat stress, leading to heightened health risks,” explained Debdatta Chakraborty, a research scholar at the interdisciplinary programme in climate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
The situation is worse in urban informal settlements, which are often marked by high material and residential density, heat-trapping design, overcrowded residential units, inaccessibility to effective cooling solutions, and poor ventilation, contributing to indoor heat stress. Venkatachala lives with his family in Priyanka Nagar, an informal settlement in Bengaluru. “Our house in Bengaluru, no matter how much we cool it, tends to remain hot. The ground floor is bearable, but we live on the first floor, which has sheet roofing, making life unbearable in the heat,” he said.
Venkatachala occasionally visits his relatives in Mysuru. They live in an anchu mane, a house with a terracotta-tiled roof, much like Venkatachala’s childhood home. “Staying in that house is an absolute delight even in summer; life there is wonderful,” he said.
However, the income there is minimal, barely reaching Rs 200 per day,” he said.
Throughout the summer, public officials advise drinking plenty of water, but an adequate water supply is a struggle for hundreds of informal settlements. Like Venkatachala, 60 per cent of Bengaluru survives on water purchased from tankers. A 12,000-litre water tanker costs Rs 1,200.
This year, as the city grows hot and thirsty, severe water shortages loom large. The scarcity has reached affluent housing colonies, malls, and the famed IT parks. In competition for vital resources such as water, the privileged have an unfair advantage over the informal workforce.
The consequences of rising heat are more severe for some than others. The days of intense heat trap the women from the informal workforce in a cycle of despair over water and toilets. Venkatachala is deeply aware of lack of toilets for women in his neighbourhood and the city.
“Women are used to controlling their need to go to the toilet from the time they go to work to the time they return,” he said. For this, the women abstain from drinking water for long hours. Consequently, they suffer serious infections, and dehydration exacerbates the impacts of heat stress. “No one talks about such issues, and most women don’t know such behaviour could affect their health. Men can somehow manage, but women need more toilets,” he added.
Heat-related health issues occur when the body’s temperature-regulating mechanism gets overwhelmed by heat. The illnesses run on a spectrum.
In the unequal world that we live in, the devastating impacts of climate change are first being felt by the most vulnerable communities. Even in the global context, wealthy nations contribute to half of the greenhouse gases, while developing nations deal with their impact.
This makes the marginalised in urban areas of developing countries, like women, children, and elderly in Venkatachala’s neighbourhood, among the first in the world to bear the full force of the climate crisis. “Our children struggle during the summers. They keep drinking water and don’t eat during the days when there is excess heat. Some elders just tie a cloth around their heads and go to work,” said Venkatachala.
Venkatachala predicts that the city will get hotter in the future. He insists on planting trees, reviving lakes, and developing villages. “The government needs to help villages and small towns become more self-sustainable. We need to prevent more migration and support those in villages to farm better and live better… If the government supports this, we can prevent excess population in the cities and everything that comes with it,” he said.
The people and communities most affected by climate change have the experience, wisdom, and perspective needed to build effective solutions. Inclusive decision-making is the first step to an inclusive climate transition. The Irish Citizens’ Assembly or the citizens’ climate assemblies in France and the UK, Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat (CCC) and Climate Assembly UK (CAUK), involve citizens, not just experts or decision-makers, in public decision-making and problem-solving.
A few organisations in India are also trying to bridge the gap between decision-makers and citizens through innovative concepts. In the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, an informal Citizen Jury was held. The jury members were informal workers of the state. Some of the suggestions of this jury were considered by the chief minister in the state policies.
A collective, Alli Serona, employed participatory art practices to inspire women from Bengaluru’s informal workforce to take their need for public buses to pass through their settlement to the city’s authorities. Two bus routes were accepted, one of which passes through a stop close to Venkatachala’s settlement.
These approaches can also be implemented in building solutions for issues like rising heat stress in cities. Solutions for a climate risked planet have to be relevant at the local and hyperlocal level.
Venkatachala grew nostalgic for his village and said, “It feels like Bangalore is our America, where we've relocated to make a living, uprooting ourselves from the serene life of the village.” A UN report states that by 2050, India will have added 41.6 crore people to its urban areas. Majority of them will be informal workers, who will move in search of their America. We have to make our cities livable for them. We have to ensure that they are not disproportionately bearing the impacts of climate change. We have to believe in our collective wisdom and include the Venkatachalas of our cities in climate decision-making.
This article is co-publish in partnership with Alli Serona, a collective of civil society organisations, think tanks, artists, creators, and informal workforce members, who are dedicated to transforming Bengaluru into a #PeopleFirstCity where the voices, needs, and priorities of the workers and residents living on the margins are not only heard but are central to the city’s design, planning, and development.
Link to full article: www.alliserona.com
Team Credits
Tanisha Arora - Creative Director
Komal Chaudhry - Project Manager
Preksha Sharma - Writer & Editor
Ahmed Sikander - Visual & Animation Designer
Mumbai on Web & Jeet Mashru - Web Developer
Amulya Leona Noronha - Kannada Copywriter
Mandira Kalaan, Mallika Arya, Nitish Dorle & Mrinalini - Advisors
We also thank Janet Orlene our on-field researcher, Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA) for their role as community partners, Debdatta Chakraborty, research scholar at the interdisciplinary programme in climate studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Doctor Parth Sharma, a public health physician and researcher, Smriti Tiwari from Socratus, Rama Thoopal, Lead - Communications Expert and Raj Bhagat, GeoAnalytics from WRI India for their support and valuable contribution to the article with relevant insights, knowledge data, and infographics.
Newsletter
